Floods caused huge damage in Italy: Governor
CASTEL BOLOGNESE: Floods that killed nine people in Italy’s northern Emilia-romagna will cost billions of euros, with agriculture hit hard ater fields were swamped, the regional governor said on Thursday.
“The scale of the devastation caused by the bad weather is like another earthquake,” Stefano Bonaccini, president of the Emilia-romagna region, told the Rai 3 public television channel.
According to the Coldireti agricultural association, more than 5,000 farms were let under water in the region, which includes Italy’s so-called “Fruit Valley,” and which suffered extensive damage from an earthquake in 2012.
The government is expected next week to earmark an extra 20 million euros ($22 million) for Emilia-romagna, on top of 10 million euros already allocated in response to previous floods in early May.
Authorities in Ravenna issued an immediate evacuation order on Thursday for three villages threatened by floods ater heavy rains.
Buses were being sent to help residents leave Villanova di Ravenna, Fileto and Roncalceci ater the river Lamone burst its banks.
Nearly two dozen rivers and streams have flooded across the southeast of the Emilia Romagna region following downpours earlier this week, submerging entire neighbourhoods and farmland. More than 10,000 people have been evacuated from their homes and hundreds of landslides were reported, regional officials said.
The rain stopped mid-aternoon on Wednesday and meteorologists said they expected no significant rainfall on Thursday.
“But when we have six months of rain in 36 hours, falling where there had already been record rain two weeks ago, there is no territory that can hold out,” said Bonaccini.
“We had an estimated two billion (euros) of damages two weeks ago... the ground no longer absorbs anything,” Bonaccini said.
Two people died in the same region earlier this month ater 48 hours of almost continuous rain.
Italy’s armed forces and the coastguard have joined the emergency effort, deploying helicopters to life desperate residents from their homes and inflatable boats to reach houses surrounded on all sides by water. As the floods receded in some areas, residents were let cleaning homes and streets thick with mud and filled with debris.
“I’ve lived here since 1979, I’ve seen floods go by, but I’ve never seen anything like that,” Edoardo Amadori, a resident of the city of Cesena, told AFP on Wednesday.